Gretchen Nemechek

I like to take it a bit farther than empathy with a push toward compassion. Often when we are in 'disagreement' we are coming from a place of attachment to our own idea, expectation, or way of thinking. We judge the other perspective and don't often approach it with and open-mind or a compassionate perspective. When we lean into really and truly trying to understand the other person's goals, desires and objective AND why they might also be defending their position we can start to soften the frustration, annoyance and sometimes bruised ego and replace it with finding a better way to see value in the other person's perspective or at the very least where or why they are coming to the conversation in the way that they are.

In my experience, working with team members to manage or modify behavior always starts with curiosity and a genuine desire to understand what might be going on. If a team member is consistently late or absent (and this represents a departure from previously observed behavior) chances are there is something going on. Perhaps trouble in personal their personal life, illness, lack of motivation, conflict at work that is leading to disengagement. The goal of the initial conversation is to seek understand and clarity and try to get to the root cause.

One of the biggest learnings for me in the past decade is that networking should be an ongoing and evergreen activity. This is one of our biggest professional assets and should be consistently nurtured. Don't wait until there is an 'event' forcing you to network. And if you are afraid of 'networking' just think of it as meeting interesting people and having an interesting conversation--who knows where it will lead. And lastly, always approach networking in the spirit of bringing value--how can you be of service or be helpful. Focus on giving, less than "getting".

Mindset is probably one of the most important elements to leading team members through change. Our teams need to be change ready since everything around us is change. Just look at the last two years of layoffs. By helping them build resilience and the mindset to cope with the uncertainty we are preparing them to be much more competent and capable in the landscape of today's business environments. One of the key factors here also is supporting them to support their own mental health and well-being so that they have a deeper well of reserves to draw upon when things get challenging.

Tools are great, but understanding HOW and WHY the team is motivated and how they prefer to communicate is perhaps the most critical element for any leader. Investing in myself and my team to create this awareness was critical to our success--particularly as we grew, underwent reorgs and also shifted strategies. Knowing what motivated each team member was key to helping create greater accountability and also work with them to ensure that each day they could show up as the best-version of themselves to deliver on our charter.

I love Smartsheet. Smartsheet really changed the way we were able to collaborate as a team where projects where concerned but also allowed us to set up workflows that helped manage visibility to certain actions and steps that needed to be taken.